What's new for Fall 2026?

All-new Course

This course is a complete redesign of CS 1670, 1690, and 2670. We have new assignments, a new teaching OS that runs on the Raspberry Pi, and a new pedagogical approach.

We have developed seven new projects that will take you from a blank, dead Raspberry Pi to a fully functioning operating system with all the core features found a modern version of Linux or macOS.

The course is designed to be hands-on, interactive, and focused on helping you learn to think like an OS designer. Our philosophy is to hide nothing from you: you work with the real hardware, starting from nothing, and own your code (and bugs).

As a consequence, projects in CS 1670 will come with almost no stencil code—we only give you header files that contain constants, but no code. You write everything else, sometimes with the aid of AI.

Whiteboard Discussions

The course complements lectures and implementation projects with regular whiteboard discussions. These are small-group discussions (about three students, one staff member) that review conceptual material and explore ideas related to recent assignments and course material. Whiteboard discussions are mandatory and form a significant part of your grade.

Please see the whiteboard discussion page for details of how whiteboard discussions will work and why we’re doing this.

Honest Grading

We are introducing an honest grading policy, designed to give you clear and honest feedback on your work without compromising the external perception of your grade. Honest grading means that we differentiate between the wide range of submissions that would typically receive an A-level grade: you will know if your work is truly exceptional, good and meeting expectations, or has minor deficiencies. Yet, we won’t grade “harshly” and create an external appearance of a lower grade than you deserve.

In a nutshell, you will receive grades between 1 (best, truly excellent) and 6 (fail, unacceptable) for graded components of the course; at the end of the semester, all grades 3 and above will translate into an A.

Please see the honest grading policy page for details of how this works and why we’re doing this.